Pearl (poem)

Pearl
Miniature from Cotton MS Nero A X. The Dreamer stands on the other side of the stream from the Pearl-maiden.
Author(s)	Gawain Poet (anonymous)
Language	Middle English, North West Midlands dialect
Date	late 14th century
Provenance	Henry Savile, Yorkshire
Series	together with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Cleanness and Patience
Manuscript(s)	Cotton MS Nero A X
First printed edition	1864 Richard Morris
Genre	Poem, elegy, allegory and alliterative verse
Verse form	Alliterative Revival, rhyme ABABABABBCBC
Length	101 stanzas, 1212 lines
Subject	Father mourning the loss of his daughter ('pearl')

Pearl (Middle English: Perle) is a late 14th-century Middle English poem that is considered one of the most important surviving Middle English works. With elements of medieval allegory and from the dream vision genre, the poem is written in a North-West Midlands variety of Middle English and is highly—though not consistently—alliterative; there is, among other stylistic features, a complex system of stanza-linking.

A father, mourning the loss of his perle (pearl), falls asleep in a garden; in his dream, he encounters the 'Pearl-maiden'—a beautiful and heavenly woman—standing across a stream in a strange landscape. In response to his questioning and attempts to obtain her, she answers with Christian doctrine. Eventually she shows him an image of the Heavenly City, and herself as part of the retinue of Christ the Lamb. However, when the Dreamer attempts to cross the stream, he awakens suddenly from his dream and reflects on its significance.

The poem survives in a single manuscript (London, British Library MS Cotton MS Nero A X), which includes two other religious narrative poems: Patience, and Cleanness, and the romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.^[1] All are thought to be by the same author, dubbed the "Pearl poet" or "Gawain poet", on the evidence of stylistic and thematic similarities. The first complete publication of Pearl, Patience and Cleanness was in Early English Alliterative Poems in the West Midland Dialect of the fourteenth century, printed by the Early English Text Society in 1864.